Mercury Capture within Coal-Fired Power Plant Electrostatic Precipitators: Model Evaluation

Efforts to reduce anthropogenic mercury emissions worldwide have recently focused on a variety of sources, including mercury emitted during coal combustion. Toward that end, much research has been ongoing seeking to develop new processes for reducing coal combustion mercury emissions. Among air pollution control processes that can be applied to coal-fired boilers, electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) are by far the most common, both on a global scale and among the principal countries of India, China, and the U.S. that burn coal for electric power generation. A previously reported theoretical model of in-flight mercury capture within ESPs is herein evaluated against data from a number of full-scale tests of activated carbon injection for mercury emissions control. By using the established particle size distribution of the activated carbon and actual or estimated values of its equilibrium mercury adsorption capacity, the incremental reduction in mercury concentration across each ESP can be predicted and compared to experimental results. Because the model does not incorporate kinetics associated with gas-phase mercury transformation or surface adsorption, the model predictions represent the mass-transfer-limited performance. Comparing field data to model results reveals many facilities performing at or near the predicted mass-transfer-limited maximum, particularly at low rates of sorbent injection. Where agreement is poor between field data and model predictions, additional chemical or physical phenomena may be responsible for reducing mercury removal efficiencies.